


Power Ballad Or: The Lyons, The Witch, and the Closet

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7, Empire (TV 2015)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 09:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3805075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now that Cookie Lyon has been released from a prison planet, either Supreme Commander Servalan will help her advance her son Jamal's career or...Cookie will just have to find another way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power Ballad Or: The Lyons, The Witch, and the Closet

WEDNESDAY NIGHT  
Cookie Lyon swaggered up to the bar, taking advantage of the sudden pall of silence dropping over the party. 

“Gimme one of them,” she told the bartender. He reached for a champagne flute. “Naw,” she said, reaching across to grab a bottle. If Blake had been there, he would have envied her ability to just…arrive at places she wasn’t supposed to be, even without benefit of Vila’s entry services or a teleport bracelet.

As Cookie took a swig of champagne and gave a healthy belch, Supreme Commander Servalan arrived at the center of the room, where a pin spotlight had thoughtfully been arranged to follow her. She spread her arms slightly, and the magnificent fur coat slid down, pooled on the floor, and was lifted deferentially by two mutoids. 

Cookie’s weighty eyelashes dipped in the interplanetary sign of “Bitch, PLEASE!” She divested her own fur coat (Gurnivian cyber-leopard, half black, half white). Porsha reached down. Cookie stage-whispered, “Put it on!” At that point, the troopers realized that there was a ringer, and hustled Porsha off to the kitchen. The coat was a big hit with the Delta chauffeurs and bodyguards and ladies’ maids. 

Servalan’s adjutant whispered, “Supreme Commander d’ye no’ ken who that is?” but Servalan merely swept a dismissive hand. In the Federation, the barrier between the forces of Authority and organized crime was a semi-permeable membrane. If, after nearly two decades of exile on Exbar, Cookie Lyon still had a fortune hidden somewhere, or if she could claw her way back to the top, then Servalan would be willing to ignore her conviction for Shadow smuggling and money laundering. 

Cookie, the half-empty bottle still swinging from her hand, slinked up to Servalan. Both wore floor-length white dresses, cut down to There and slashed up to There. They were sequin-to-Swarovski crystal, and neither of them blinked.

Across the room, Anika pursed her lips, thinking, isn’t that just *typical*? Lucious muttered something about why Anika had to come to this thing in a damn potato sack, he paid enough for her clothes. Anika’s long-sleeved, boat-necked, calf-length dress was somewhat monastic. It was tailored in fine café-au-lait cashmere, and she looked lovely. She had one fine thread of diamonds around her neck, another one sewn into her hair. Although Anika had a closet full of revealing gowns every bit as splendid as Servalan’s, she knew better than to try to compete. To be favored with an invitation where the Supreme Commander would be present was to accept low-key. (She also thought of herself as paying for her own clothes—the ones the designers didn’t give her for free—out of her not-that-generous salary as an A&R executive.) 

“Hey,” Cookie said. “You know, this ‘Servalan: Her Legacy” thing you’re workin’ on? Well, my son Jamal, he’s real talented, a fine, fine singer and songwriter, he lay down some real dope beats, just what you want to open up that concert.” 

“The Supreme Commander will gi’ the matter her full attention,” Jarriere said, attempting to steer Cookie out of the way so the line of flatterers and supplicants could reach Servalan. 

After a few flatterers, Servalan yawned, teetered forward and back, which made the stiletto heels a bit less uncomfortable, but made the multiplicity of straps on her sandals a bit more uncomfortable. She told Jarriere to get rid of them all, and steered toward the periphery of the banquet hall. There seemed to be a series of niches, furnished with divans and shrouded by iridescent curtains made of strands of holo-beads. Servalan waved her hand to lower the lights, and addressed herself to the thoughtfully provided drinks tray and canapés. Then she sat back, and sighed in contentment after unbuckling the last strap and taking off a shoe.

Hakeem, reeling after a few fat lines, stumbled into the niche. 

Servalan noticed that about half of her foot had disappeared into someone’s mouth. It felt good. She looked down, and saw an elfin but well-developed young man wearing harem trousers, an organza pirate blouse, and more jewelry than Servalan herself. 

“I just LOVE older women,” Hakeem said, fortunately for him in a location incompatible with clear articulation. 

Servalan later pieced together that it must have been one of that awful woman’s sons, only the one she didn’t like. Her staffers spoke highly of his work, and the caterwauling on the melochipz submitted by Lucious on his son’s behalf didn’t strike her as worse than the various other synthezak that played in the corridors of her space station. 

Lucious met her first demand for a campaign contribution and royalty share, so the deal was soon concluded. 

THURSDAY

“Where you been?” Lucious asked Anika. He was leaning against one of the curved glass walls of the Empire conference room. Anika came through the door, flipping back the hood of her alpacamel-hair coat. “Hairdresser,” she said. “Like it?”

“No, I don’t like it. Are you crazy?”

“It’s very fashionable.”

“Yeah, well, what happened to all that weave I paid for?”

Anika was getting very, very tired of this line of argument, and Boretti’s attempts to subvert her were looking better by the minute. 

“You look like a damn boy. What do you think I am? I look like Roj Blake to you?”

“Servalan doesn’t look like a boy. And Hakeem can tell you for sure that she isn’t one.”

“Yeah? No wonder she just take my first offer, not try to hit me up for a bigger bribe.” 

Cookie lurked behind a bend in the conference-room wall. Huh, she thought. But if Fake-Ass Servalan thought she had this all sewed up, then she’d better think again. There was more than one skillet of bubbling-hot oil a girl could fry up her chicken in. 

Cookie had never met Roj Blake, but she thought she still had a Tariel code for that sweet little cousin of his.

FRIDAY

Blake decided not to put the message—purporting to be from Inga—on the main screen, and had it sent up to his cabin. “I warn you, that sounds quite dangerous for you,” he said. “All right, if you’re sure? Give me the coordinates, I’ll…” He took a moment to assess the risks, and thought that it would be best not to divulge the existence of the teleport. “I’ll meet you with a shuttle and take you to my ship.”

“What’s this about, Ma?” Jamal asked, having heard only one side of the conversation. 

“I just commed up Roj Blake, you know, the one stole that big spaceship and goes around blowing up shit? Supposed to be Public Enemy Number One, except nobody supposed to know that he’s even real and not made up to scare folks into bein’ good citizens? I bet you lay down some beats for him, y’know, all political and shit, he’ll make sure everyone in the whole Galaxy gets to hear ‘em. Except, everybody’ll know, but I’ll make him tweak it around so they can’t actually blame it on you. And, you know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Long’s they spell your name right—well, it won’t have your name, but you feel me?”

Jamal thought that sounded suspiciously Oedipal, but he nodded. 

“Do you even know Blake likes music?”

“Aww, who don’t like music? Anyway, he a big homo too, you got something in common.” 

“Maaaa!” Jamal frequently wished that his mother would just get off his side and stop helping him with his personal life. He was even ambivalent about her career advice, although he had accepted that he would never inherit his father’s Empire, and she had managed to nag and prod him into doing some of his best work in the studio.   
This whole Blake thing seemed unusually reckless even for Cookie; Jamal wondered if she had blown past leopard-print to hare-brain. 

But…on the other hand…Jamal wasn’t the Federation’s biggest fan. Status quo? That had brainwashed his father into hating two of his own sons just because they didn’t fit his idea of perfection. The status quo meant that Jamal couldn’t be free in something as innocent as pronouns in a love song, or walking down a Dome corridor hand-in-hand with his boyfriend.

“Here,” Cookie said, handing him a mug steaming from the nukulizer. “I made you hot chocolate, just like I…used to. Didn’t see any Phibian crackers, though.”

“I never liked hot chocolate, Ma, that was Dre.” Jamal looked down into the mug. Michael must have left the chocolate powder behind when he headed off for cooking school. Cookie said that she warned Michael that it was no fun being the little man propping up a star ego, but Jamal suspected she did worse than that. 

“Waste not, want not,” Cookie said, drinking a slug of cocoa, licking the moustache off her lip, and topping up the mug with brandy. 

Jamal looked around the cheerless room in a Beta zone he had been forced to move to when he developed expensive principles about taking Lucious’ money. 

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Cookie asked. Jamal stared at her in sheer amazement. “Hey, I already been in prison a loooong time, and sometimes I think there was less bullshit on Exbar—and a nicer class of people—that they got here.”

“Some people say that Exbar’s Club Fed compared to Ursa Prime or Cygnus Alpha. But that’s leaving to one say, oh, say, torture and execution…”

“Cheer up!” Cookie said. “It might never happen!”

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

Gan dished up the cottage pie. 

Cookie plowed into her portion enthusiastically. “Mmm, now this is REAL tasty. This got real meat in it? That time I was locked up, I sure missed it.” Keeping hold of her fork, she patted Jamal’s hand with her other hand. “Not as much as I missed my boys, of course.”

Jamal felt a strange sensation in his head, looked over at Cally, and realized she was “speaking” to him. “Everyone’s family is crazy,” she “said.” Jamal shrugged.

“Well, we don’t have meat every day,” Gan said, “But when I heard we were having guests—honored guests-- I took a packet out of the chiller.” 

Jamal stared at his fork. He realized that the parade of “Your New Mama”s through his childhood always bought the most expensive thing, before the gravy train halted. Blake glanced over at him. From his research, and the shreds of his memories, he thought that once he, too, had been insulated by privilege from considering the real lives of most people. And, somehow, Blake had been able to look beyond his narrow interests to the broader interests of those who were downtrodden and suffering. Perhaps Jamal would be willing to use his talents and connections to help. 

“More salad, Ms. Lyon? Anyone?” Gan asked, rising to clear the dishes.

A waft of cocoa in the air caused Blake, Jenna, and Cally to flinch. “And, since the oven was on anyway…” He excused himself and returned from the kitchen carrying a yellow enamel baking dish between his fire-engine-red mitted hands. Bowls were already on the table, so he divided up the pudding. Cally poured cream over her portion and passed the jug. 

Cookie jabbed at the pudding with a spoon. “What-all is this?”

The Liberator crewmembers tensed. “It’s called Lemon Surprise Pudding!” Gan said, inevitably. 

“It look like chocolate,” Cookie said. 

“That’s the surprise!” Gan said. Cookie guffawed. “Real sweet and hot and black, huh? You like that?” 

Gan’s eyes hooded in a flirtatious sideways glance. “Indeed!” he said. His crewmates, who an instant before had groaned at his predictability, now exchanged puzzled looks at this unexpected departure.

“I’ll just help you with the dishes,” Cookie said. Gan started to say, “No need, there’s a dishwasher,” as Jamal started to ask when she ever did a dish in her life, realizing that she might have been assigned to the kitchen or the prison laundry. “Thank you! I’d appreciate that!” Gan said. 

Jenna and Cally got the Keezarnian Tembo set out of the cabinet on the Flight Deck, and settled down for a game. Cally reminded Jenna that one of the doubler chips was defective, so they couldn’t play the Paraminian Option. 

Avon called in. “Down and safe,” he said. “So far, this is an exceedingly tedious mission.”

“Well, keep it that way,” Jenna said. “You forgot to fix the doubler for the Tembo set.”

“No, I didn’t, tell Cally to look in the velvet bag on the second shelf.”  
Gan was simultaneously proud of finding a dish towel and ashamed of the subterfuge. Cookie perched on a barstool, very aware of the advantageous display of her high-heeled legs. “How come this ship so fancy, and you ain’t got a dishwasher?”

“So much for guile! We do, of course, but it allowed me to enjoy a little more of your company, away from the others.”

“Y’all got your own bedrooms? Cabins, whatever you call it? ‘Cause you can enjoy a lot more of my company if you want. Best be away from the others, though.”

Gan put his hands around Cookie’s waist, and, giggling, they ran hand-in-hand down the corridor. Gan opened the cabin door, lowered the lights romantically, and sat down to take off his boots, futilely smoothing back the blankets to make it look like he had made the bed that morning. 

Cookie untied her belt, and was about to shrug her shoulders and drop her snakeskin-print wrap dress to the floor. Gan gazed in admiration at the underpinnings of her casual-Saturday outfit (blue-and-silver satin bra, silver tap pants trimmed with blue lace, holding up black stockings strewn with silver and gold glitter, snakeskin stilettos). Cookie gave him a tender smile, then froze. 

“Is everything all right?” Gan asked. He reached over, took her hand gently, and kissed it. “Just looking at you is the nicest thing that’s happened to me all year. We don’t have to do anything else if you’re not comfortable.” 

“Awww, it’s just that I realized that all my life, I never been with anybody but Lucious. Feels strange to be here with someone who ain’t him. Before you ask, ‘ain’t him’ is a compliment. Still strange, though.” 

“If it makes you feel any better, if I’d be the second person you’ve been with, well, you’d be the fourth. Maybe third and a halfth, if that’s possible. There was a girl at the Polytechnic I was sweet on, and my wife Grainne, of course.”

“You got divorced? ‘Cause married men, that’s nothing but trouble.”

Gan shook his head. “My wife died, that’s how I got into this mess…”

“Us cons, we don’t ever ask about what you did or what they say you did.”

“And then, well, I don’t know whether Kara counts or not, well, she was a priestess, it’s hard to explain.” 

Cookie made up her mind, pulled off the dress, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it toward the corner of the room. Then she sat down on the bed next to Gan, and unzipped his tunic. 

Meanwhile, Blake helped Jamal carry the case with his portable keyboard to the greenroom, where Cally had moderate success in leading yoga classes. Jamal plugged in the keyboard and pulled over a bench. “Do you play?” he asked Blake.

“D’you know, I don’t know? I’ve never thought about it.”

Jamal shook his head. “That sucks.” 

“I usually take more words about it, but, yes, the Federation has a lot to answer for. Not just me, of course, but everyone whose life or livelihood or freedom or memories have been ripped away.” 

Blake sat down, flexed his fingers, and looked down at the keyboard. He put his thumbs on middle C, as Jamal nodded encouragingly. Blake played a few experimental chords, said “Oh!” and then stumbled through a tune. “There is a distant star…”

Jamal thought Blake’s rumbly baritone wasn’t bad, although he tended to go sharp. “Also, those are some of the lamest beats I ever heard.” 

“That’s where you come in,” Blake said. 

“Yeah, I noodled on some stuff,” Jamal said. “Hey, shift over.” (It was a rather small bench.) “I know it was called the Freedom Party, but, not a lot rhymes with ‘freedom’.”

“Yes,” Blake said. “Rather like ‘love’—the importance isn’t matched by the easy availability of rhymes.” 

“So, I was working more with ‘liberty,’ that gives you ‘be’ and ‘you and me’”

“That’s rather trite, isn’t it?”

“Well, trite is what sells, the winning hearts and minds thing even if it’s not money. Anyway, I was thinking, a long jam, could be six minutes, so we’ll need all the rhymes we can get.”

Jamal played a riff, and started to sing. “Once upon a time, once upon a time, every man was free.” He shrugged. “I know, part of the problem is women always being less free, but ‘man’ is a strong word for a song, ‘person’ is weak. We’ll circle back and do a verse about women, okay?” He resumed singing. “Underneath a sky, not a dome, but a home, and a nation, not a Federation.” He played the riff again, right hand high on the keyboard. He gestured to Blake. “Come on, give me some harmony, just a basic progression.” Blake shrugged. Jamal lifted Blake’s hand, gave it a little squeeze, and moved his fingers through a few chords. “Underneath a sky…sing with me,” Jamal said. 

“This is fascinating,” Blake said, when they had the verses, and a catchy chorus (Jamal said that was the “hook”). Jamal put on the drum track (“Heartbeat, sure, but that’s the point—freedom is the natural body, the Federation is the machine.”) and then pendulumed back and forth about whether he wanted strings or not, and how to balance the horns. 

“Yeah,” Jamal said. “Creating something, bouncing ideas off someone else, making it better…it’s the best thing there is.” And Blake was playing chords with one hand, so his other hand resting on his thigh, somebody’s, it was a narrow bench. And when Jamal said, “OK, that’s it, that’s a wrap,” and stood up and stretched his arms where they were cramped, and then lifted his wrists like a triumphant boxer. He sat down again, straddling the bench, and tugged at Blake’s wrists. “I guess you don’t remember this either,” Jamal said, sadly. Blake closed his eyes and shook his head. 

“You’re a real quick study, though,” Jamal said, and leaned in to kiss him. Blake kept his eyes closed, angry at someone but not Jamal. It was and it wasn’t the first time, and he rather wanted the not-first time to be more meaningful than this fugitive moment with a kind stranger. But Blake thought that he was tired of everything being meaningful, for desperate stakes. Here he was with a handsome young man, who was young, and strong, and liked Blake and possibly even admired him and who was *there.*

SATURDAY NIGHT

“It certainly is getting crowded in here,” Cally said, operating the teleport. Vila and Avon appeared, just as Jenna led Cookie and Jamal past the teleport bay, en route to the shuttle. Jamal kissed Blake goodbye.

“’Mal, this man here got a real big pair of balls, he got the big thing to go along with it?”

“Ma!” Jamal said, and left it at that. Cookie reached up and left a purple-lipsticked kiss on Gan’s cheek. With her arm still around Gan’s waist, she turned to Blake. “Y’all should put that in your recruiting posters. Join the rebels, get some deep-dickin’!” 

Gan blushed. Vila’s eyebrows sherpa’d toward his hairline. 

“You the boyfriend?” Cookie asked Avon, who was steaming gently, like a Lemon Surprise Pudding in a turned-off oven. 

“Certainly not,” Avon said. 

“Roj, he yell at you, just tell him, who he gonna believe, you or his own lyin’ eyes?”

“Shuttle’s waiting,” Jenna said. Avon wondered if she was displaying unusual compassion or just wanted to get the hell out of there before the situation reached Defcon 1. 

Gan, his hand upraised in farewell, waited until Cookie and Jamal could no longer be seen past the bend of the corridor. Then he strolled off, humming a tune from a recent Empire podcast. 

Vila hung around for a couple of minutes waiting to see if there was going to be any more Drama, then shrugged and headed for his cabin. 

“Well, come on through,” Blake said, heading toward the Flight Deck.

“Getting me out of the way?” Avon said, reaching inside his jacket for the datacubes.

“Don’t be ridiculous! I had no idea they were even coming here,” Blake said. “I sent you on a useful mission—thanks, by the way—and I didn’t think it would be particularly dangerous. I suppose Vila could have got the data himself, but we both know he was more comfortable with you there. For protection, as well as for your cybernetic expertise.”

Blake input the datacube in his console, and sent it to the Battle Computer for analysis. He sat down to wait. He cleared his throat, thinking that his persuasive skills would have to be at a peak for the next ten seconds or so. “Well, have something to eat, get some rest, but later or perhaps tomorrow I’d like you to go over the recordings we made. See if there’s a way you can make Jamal’s voice less forensically recognizable, but without destroying the aesthetic value. Although I’m not sure aesthetic value is necessarily of first importance to the fans. And these--tracks” Blake said self-consciously, “are as much propaganda as entertainment anyhow.”

“I’m almost appreciative. Even from you, that takes effrontery. Jamal is his name, then? The woman with him—“

“That’s his mother, Cookie. I’m not sure you missed much.” 

“—called him Mal. So I assumed Malcolm. Or perhaps Mal de Mer.”

“Jealous? Or envious? Or have you been elevated to some sort of Papacy that allows you to sentence everyone you dislike to a lifetime of celibacy?”

Avon was going to take exception to “dislike,” but he had to admit that, having known Blake for about six months and been in love with him for about five and a half, he was still hard-pressed to recall a civil word he had ever addressed to him. 

“It would be barbaric to become agitated over a…temporary amusement. Even if there were some sort of arrangement between us. I don’t believe in jealousy.” 

Avon didn’t believe in Central Security either, but that hadn’t stopped them from inflicting pain on him. Credence didn’t seem to be a prerequisite.

Avon turned his head and closed his eyes. He didn’t think even Blake could misinterpret his expression, even if Blake somehow managed not to know how he felt. (Avon devoutly hoped to live long enough to hear the end of it from Vila.) 

Avon had just got back from breaking into someplace and stealing something, which was all very well, but there had been a very good chance of getting killed or worse. Avon didn’t know if he should interpret this to mean that the odds were on his side, or that he had only a certain number of times he could take insane risks, and now he had one fewer left. The first couple of times, it had been exhilarating, but now the awful things that could have happened loomed much larger than the workaday tedium of sending one lot of troopers off on a wild goose chase, knocking a couple more over the head, waiting for Vila to flummox the computer center door, and extracting another datacube.

He didn’t think he could go on any longer without Blake enveloping him in his arms and promising him that everything would, somehow, be all right. Avon was sure that Blake would never think of it on his own, and Avon certain wouldn’t ask him, and even if he somehow obtained compliance, he would be unable to shut off the voice in his head pointing out that he wouldn’t need anyone to make him feel better if Blake didn’t keep sending him off to do things that made him feel worse.

There was only one thing for it. He already conducted most of his conversations with Blake while more or less standing on his shoes, so he didn’t have far to travel. He put one arm around Blake, and used his other hand to tilt Blake’s head down onto Avon’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he whispered into the side of Blake’s neck. “I’ll take care of you. It’ll be all right.”

The momentum drove Avon back until his knees hit the back of the sofa, pulling Blake down with him as he fell. 

“Really?” Blake said. Or perhaps it was “Really.” or “Really!”


End file.
